David Chalmers
David Chalmers considers the consciousness of rocks as well as thermostats, although he eschews the notion that rocks are conscious:
- "I do not think it is strictly accurate to say that rocks (for example) have experiences . . . although rocks may have experiences associated with them. ... Personally, I am much more confident of naturalistic dualism than I am of panpsychism. The latter issue seems to be very much open. But I hope to have said enough to show that we ought to take the possibility of some sort of panpsychism seriously: there seem to be no knockdown arguments against the view, and there are various positive reasons why one might embrace it." (Chalmers 1996:299)
In his 2002 Consciousness and its Place in Nature, Chalmers carefully considers neutral monism and panpsychism, variants of what he calls "Type-F Monism". He admits that
- "The type-F view is admittedly speculative and it can sound strange at first hearing. Many find it extremely counterintuitive to suppose that fundamental physical systems have phenomenal properties: e.g. that there is something it is like to be an electron".
Read more about this topic: Neutral Monism
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